No guess for you!
Why should they need to coherently explain any of this? They have real lives in the real world. They trusted and voted. They are as well informed to the extent that they need be. This is stuff for political nerds. How much do you know, political nerd person, about types of welding and specific brazing alloys, about double entry accounting, about OCami, Scala, Dart, Haskell and Julia types of programming and scripts?
TPA trade promotion authority
allow president to finalize agreements with Pacific Rim nations and European Union
TAA trade adjustment assistance
help workers displaced by trade. Support collapsed. Dems and Unions overwhelming supported in the past, now less than 25% support.
TPP trans Pacific partnership
massive trade agreement negotiated in secret between twelve countries that apparently expands NAFTA and apparently modeled on failed Korea FTA, provides incentives for offshore jobs, imposes limits on food safety, environment. Forces states to comply with TPP rules. Elevates foreign firms to status of sovereign nations. Establishes tribunals. This information is poor due to secrecy, dribbles out in leaks.
Unions flipped on TAA blowing TPA with it, linked as it is with TPA. That's what this is about.
Noteworthy, I think, to me it is, maybe not to you. It shows how things are done at very very low levels of prestige inducement. They didn't work but they were tried, meaning they did work at one time and will again but just not now.
The White House has been wooing Democrats for weeks, even dangling the trappings of the presidency—Oval Office visits, rides on Air Force One, phone calls galore—in a way that’s been rare for Obama. (The D.C. pundit class has long urged him to engage in this sort of maneuvering to advance his legislative agenda; it doesn’t seem to have made much difference.) On Thursday evening, Obama made a surprise visit to the Congressional Baseball Game, where he smiled for pictures with lawmakers and reportedly button-holed Pelosi for 15 minutes on the trade bill.
I'm filed with glee that simple nonsense didn't work and drenched with despair that it's SOP and usually does work.
It is a dramatic scene that will live on in history and in drama. It's been seen before. Pelosi steps out from a gaggle of white-robed sandal-wearing senators and representatives as Obama passes on the capitol steps and stabs Obama right in the chest, then the other robed congress people lunge forward after her and jab the stricken bleeding dying emperor. They are all actors, all bent over the figure on stage they pull out ribbons of red and toss them in all directions as squirting blood filling the air and settling on the stage starkly red against white.
Russell Berman, The Atlantic, A Big Win for Big Labor
36 comments:
Encore!
Hate to burst your bubbles folks and I am not happy to predict this but the Dems will support a revised TAA once its govt benefits are doubled or more.
And the TPA will then be law.
The Repubs got played again and they were not even in the game. Now,in 2016, the Dems can claim they are the party of the workers and the Repubs will be holding their dicks as usual.
You heard it here first.
It's not my job to understand it, but it is my job to demand transparency and deliberation in the process of such overarching decisions.
Whose job was it to read the Obamacare bill before voting for it?
Who promised transparency?
“When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing,” Mr. Obama said in a major campaign speech laying out his goals for transparency."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/26/obama-vow-to-delay-signing-is-subject-to-interpret/#ixzz3ct0Yy3Ja
Bite me - I won. When you win, you can do the lying.
AJ, in the back of my head, I had an idea that there was something, something else that I didn't know. How could I know? Was there any way for me to gather information? No, no there wasn't.
Absolutely nothing in this country, about this country, has been going the way that I would like it to go.
Remember, I was a blue collar worker.
The only thing that I've done, and I think that there are a lot of people like me, who joined the Tea Party, not to oppose the President, but to replace a lot of Republicans, and we haven't had that big of an impression.
I'm fucking pissed off, but what the hell, I'm a Viet Nam veteran and I'm quite used to FUBAR.
AllenS: If I were a self identifier heh] I'd pick the Tea Party first.
I don't know much more than you but, in my first job out of college I worked as an auditor for a labor union. That was in 1977 and, even back then, they had guy who did nothing but file claims with the fed govt for members who lost their job due to imports. That was what they called the TRA or Trade Re-Adjustment Act.
Now, almost 40 years later, it seems that law is still around and I guess it is now the TAA or Trade Adjustment Act. Since the Dems voted against it today, I figure they just want Obama to sweeten the benefits for workers and then they will vote for it next week and Obama will get what he wants.
Believe me , I wasn't trying to be a wiseass towards you; I was just responding to the consensus of the talking heads that Obama had been embarrassed by his own party. I think Pelosi and Obama had this planned all along. And think it will help the Dems in 2016 too.
For the first time in a long time Democrats self-identify as Americans.
The whole thing is a clusterfuck from the TPP on up. The set ups for who is included is a nightmare for the US. All of these monetary trade vehicles and how they originate and the regulatory compliance is going to be outrageous. If NAFTA is any indicator of who this will go, the entire thing will be a shithouse production.
Everytime I see a Kia or a Kia commercial, I gotta figure the Korea trade bill helped them not us.
Yo Chip - Have you ever considered posting in 36 or 48 point font? I mean, this 18 point font you're using is fun but I'm just thinking that for all the legally blind and marginally literate fans of your manifestoes (and I'm sure there are a few) it might go over with them better to magnify the font REALLY BIG LIKE MR. MAGOO STYLE BIG. MONSTROUS BIG FOR PEOPLE PRONE TO MONSTROUS FREAK-OUT REACTIONS OVER THE UNCONTROVERSIAL POLITICS OF BIPARTISAN TRADE LEGISLATION.
Just a suggestion. Keep up the good work!
AJ, I never felt like you were "trying to be a wiseass towards you [me]". Quite the contrary.
And, yes, all of the trade bills seem to help everyone in the world, but us.
It's frustrating as hell. Compounding the problem is this "we can't show you what's in the bill".
Ritmo still being snide. I mean, you said freak-out reactions of the uncontroversial politics of bipartisan trade legislation. All the while you left the magic word 'secret' out of that statement. And you wonder why people aren't fans of you (and I'm sure there are a few).
It sounds like there's something going on behind the debacle over this legislation that's really worth finding out, and where I might agree with a lot of what you guys are saying. Which is precisely why I have an interest in hearing a sane explanation of it (even on this blog), and why I find the psychotically hyperbolic font sizes so distracting. I mean, a coloring book might contain the works of Tolstoy, but who would know it? I think if anyone would realize these things, a self-proclaimed artist might. That's all I'm saying. Some people have trouble reading very small font; I have trouble with it being too big for the refrigerator magnets.
Understand what? What the hell does it say?!?!?!
Basically it's Democrats jockeying for votes of people who feel it's anti-labor and anti-tarriff and Republicans jockeying for votes of people who felt it gave too much opaque (non-transparent) power to El Executivo.
Or am I missing something?
Glad to know that AllenS. Thanks
Chip - your posts are great- ignore the comments of the wasted sperm Ritmo.
If anyone is interested in why international trade agreements are not subject to the 2/3 Senate majority treaty requirement spelled out in the Constitution, here you go. Without the footnotes, it's about 3 pages of text.
Short version is that Congress has historically said that it wants it that way and the courts have stayed out of it.
I see ritmo, as always, has no valid argument, so he quickly jumps to ad hominem attacks. I get that some people will support Obama, even if Obama won't tell them what it is they are supporting. But frat boy jokes don't really sell the trade bills, it just makes a person look ignorant and still needing the education they're avoiding.
Ok, Leland. Next time I promise to skip the ad hominems and go right to the valid arguments - much like the one AJ made when bringing up "wasted sperm".
Ritmo- you are the one who started busting Chip's balls for no good reason at all. If you don't like it here, start your own blog.
The fact it was ChoomCare II made people leery of it.
Add all the new ChoomCare premium increases, the OPM hack, Ryan's meltdown, and His Poutiness' hissy fit and it went down like a B-24 over Ploesti.
PS I see Ritmo's here to salvage the mess with his obfuscation.
He should have gone to the Hill with Selfie.
Not being able to read the type font of a topic that's worth discussing isn't "no good reason", (and neither is calling someone "wasted sperm" BTW), but if you disagree then that's your right. I guess I just wish I was arrogant enough to have known that.
Are these 3 bills really dead? I'm skeptical. I'll believe it when I see it. As for the Republicans, I thought they were against "secret" bills. Remember the outrage over the 2000 page Obamacare bill that no one had read?
People elected them because they didn't like Obama, and here they are working with him on Amnesty and secret trade bills.
Much depends on what the meaning of "wasted" is. Ending up a souvenir on a blue dress is wasted, but growing up to defend corruption, lies and incompetence is a relatively high calling. It takes a lot of reading, education, and a strong stomach. You have to swallow down a lot of self-respect, and you don't even get a chance to recover these days before they are shoving another load down your throat. Have some compassion, people.
"Are these 3 bills really dead?"
Probably not. Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Leader in the House said just yesterday that if TAA failed there would not be a vote on TPA. Yet TAA failed they did vote on TPA and passed it. You don't have to be an Alex Jones fan to see the possibility that the TAA vote was for political cover and could be passed next week after sweeteners are added for the Dem voters.
Bag is still pissed about being called out as a phony Republican. He will certainly swallow a lot of Republican, er, essence in order to gain what tiny amount of political traction with them that he can, though.
But at least he can defend himself, unlike AJ.
And we the taxpayers get the bill for the TAA sweeteners.
I can't decide what the fed govt does best. It is a toss up between:
1- Spending our money faster than we fork it over to them or
2- Being grossly incompetent.
Is that Rytmo guy on my bell end again? I'm skipping him. Do I need to check and remove things?
Because so help me, if I do, why I outta...
Making his shitass comments disappear as if they never existed is the worst for him, all that trouble, and zap, gone forever unread by his target, just gone. Do I need to that? Say so and I'll slip in the back, disappear them, without the slightest disturbance in the Force, none whatsoever to my psyche. All this with no idea what he farted out his mouth.
Ritmo, it's up to you to be relevant. I don't care if you prefer not to be relevant. If you want to be an ignorant frat boy, it's your call.
It would be like making my comments go back into the closet with you.
And why not? It's not like you're someone who can take a challenge in real life, anyway.
Ritmo seems one of those tiresome bores who has to jump up and down and shout "Look at me, Look at Me".
I skip his comments.
I assume he's stuck in jail - or the loony bin - and has nothing better to do.
Rhythm and Balls said...
Not being able to read the type font of a topic that's worth discussing isn't "no good reason", (and neither is calling someone "wasted sperm" BTW), but if you disagree then that's your right. I guess I just wish I was arrogant enough to have known that.
Aside from your irrelevant attention whoring, you know you can magnify type on a web browser right? Hold down the control key and if you have a scroll wheel, then move it back or forth to zoom/unzoom.
I think that ritmo and I have a common problem and we need to listen and learn.
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